This is true for both major flavors of the new Office -- the conventional Office 2013 editions, licensed perpetually for a single device, and the subscription-based Office 365 editions, which are delivered and updated via the cloud, and can be installed on up to 5 Windows or Apple OS X computers per user license.

This article will focus on Office 2013 and Office 365 editions such as Office 2013 Professional and Office 365 ProPlus that are made up of end-user productivity applications, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, and exclude those that include server products, such as Office 365 Enterprise, which comes also with the online versions of the Exchange, Lync and SharePoint servers.

Probably the most dramatic change in the new version of Office is how it's linked to the cloud for a wide variety of purposes in ways that either didn't exist or were much more limited in Office 2010 and previous editions.

For starters, a tight integration with Microsoft's SkyDrive online storage service is intended to make it simple and convenient for end-users to save their files in the cloud both in Office 2013 and Office ProPlus. This ties into the increasingly popular workplace use of services like Box.net, Dropbox and Google Drive, which simplify not only access to files but also sharing them with colleagues, leading to better collaboration.